Simplicity

When I was younger, I enjoyed complexity. Third Reich, Squad Leader, Stellar Conquest, understanding rules of complex game systems was entertaining and engaging. My dream vacation was to gather seven other people and play a game of Machiavelli to absolute victory. I figured that would take a long weekend at least. If I had a week to burn with like-minded people, it would be with a five-player game of Third Reich in a cabin in the mountains.

I always thought I might have an advantage, not because I understood the rules better or had some brilliant strategy, but because I maintain a singular focus for long periods of time where others got bored and drifted off. If I was ever a decent engineer, it was because I could hold complex concepts in my head and focus on them. Not as well as a few analysts I know and respect, but better than average. Too bad I could never quite fathom the rules of personal interactions, though I still find them fascinating to try and decipher.

I received an e-mail from a friend late last night, replying to my latest Imaginings, asking me not to respond. She's working her way through some 2000 e-mails and I think that's just her personal account. Of course, she might think this is my passive-aggressive attempt to engage her in conversation without actually dishonoring her request. She doesn't know that I, too, am working off a backlog this week, attempting to catch up with unwritten messages as a daily exercise before starting on the four short stories I have sketched out. Nor does she realize the title and several lines have been lingering in my Drafts folder for several weeks while my focus drifted elsewhere.

I see so many people with so much technology that is advertised to simplify their lives but only makes them more complex. E-mail, text messages, blogs, IM's, web sites, cell phones. The last two strike me. Web sites. The Web. Cell phones. Cells. Even the words are indicative of modern technology, sticky, informational prisons of our own creation from which we can't get escape, within which we struggle but only become more deeply entangled. The irony is that the very things that are supposed to free us to communicate more effectively are the ones that chain us deeper in confusion.

What I find odd and amusing is how many people I know who have all the latest gadgets but don't have the time to use or keep up with them. They lose e-mails or miss phone calls, or just don't have time to be in touch. Not that the technology itself helps us there. Once a week I have one program or another downloading an update, sometimes innocuously, other times completely restructuring the interface (like my Yahoo homepage today). Each iteration is supposed to be "new and improved" which it generally is, though there is a trade-off between the time it saves and the time I have to spend relearning it.

That doesn't include the ubiquitous entertainment occupying every moment of every day in almost every facet of our lives. X-Boxes, DVR's, high-def Dolby 7.1 surround. We emerge from our homes as iPod people, walking automatons each wrapped in a private world of sights and sounds but desperately afraid we might miss something going on around us that we don't have time to notice. Internet access at work. Televisions with bottom-lines and sidebars and endless streaming speculation in every public space from restaurants to waiting rooms to gyms to bathrooms. Yes, ladies, the men's room is now equipped with high-def sports and business broadcasts over the urinals in mid-line to high-end restaurants and bars. Are you jealous, or just amazed that we can concentrate on two things at once? I think they only upgraded us from newspapers because they discovered that reading required a little too much of our attention. Just think, guys, one day we'll have video games to occupy our time in there like they do in Holland, though I won't explain how. Plumbing and electricity, two great inventions that go great together.

How long before we mainline information directly to our brains in a completely dark and Gibsonian future. As soon as Apple and Dow Chemical can agree on the materials and protocol for the interface with the Society of Neuroscience, I would think. Or will that be Microsoft and GE? We are an info-tainment addicted society. Wi-fi is our gateway drug.

People undervalue simplicity. How many of you come up with your best ideas or solutions in the shower? Why is that? Perhaps because you are allowing a level of your mind to work without inundating it with stimuli that requires its attention and response. This is your subconscious calling. I'm sorry, he's not available at the moment, would you like to leave a message? No, I'll just follow-up with an encrypted video/voice-mail later in a dream.

Some of what we see as ADD (or ADHD) in children is in fact over-stimulation, giving them too many choices. Anecdotally, many mild to moderate behavior problems subside when the clutter is cleared away and their toys are reduced to a cherished few. There is nothing quite like scarcity to enrich our experiences, and nothing like distraction to dilute them.

In writing, as with other less structured vocations, distraction is a constant danger. Every year I attend conferences where established writers warn against fooling yourself into thinking that you are writing when you are not. The easiest way not to write is to read up on technique, update your software, organize your information, or research a topic on the web, all in the name of greater productivity. Perhaps you need a laptop, a wireless modem, a digital voice recorder, a Blackberry, plotting software and iPhone so you can write whenever and wherever the inspiration strikes. The problem is, most of that time and equipment doesn't lead anywhere. Writers write. Messages, stories and chapters don't usually write themselves, well, except maybe once or twice in a dream.

For me, nothing beats sitting on a porch in the cool of the day or evening, listening to the birds and other sounds of nature with a notebook in my lap. Just slowing down to the ultimate simplicity of me, the ideas and the world at large with none of the other worries and complexities of life to intrude. Unlike the games of my youth, there are no complex rules or scenarios, no long setup time or scheduling conflicts. Just my imagination and the satisfying audio-tactile scratching of 0.5 lead against paper. I find the act meditative and therapeutic, like zazen for a Buddhist monk.

I read this weekend that Buddhism is dying in Japan. The Japanese are turning to Christianity and Islam because they want to hear a sermon every week, which strikes me both as a social function and another form of entertainment. The goal of Zen is not some mysterious state or destination. It is to live each moment fully, to be engaged in each activity without being distracted by other thoughts or plans, the past or the future. You feel a master's presence because he focuses all of his attention, his entire being upon you. He brings that intensity to every activity in his life whether chopping wood or cooking dinner or simple conversation. How poor our world will become if that example is lost beneath the rising tide of noise.

I think we will always need mystics, monks and poets, perhaps even the odd dilettante writer, to remind us to turn off and tune in to the beauty just within our sight as we sit to catch our breath. Whatever their creed, they have but one commandment: Simplify.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III